Don’t Worry: It’s Only One of Two Posts about America’s Next Top Model

Posted on 9/17/2008 by cheesefairy

I realized today that I only have to watch tonight’s The Makeover episode of cycle 11 of America’s Next Top Model, which I am not so much watching as, well, scrubbing off in the shower, and then I don’t have to watch any other episodes until the season finale. Because the rest is just silly filler.

(Incidentally, as this is Cycle 11, do you think that means that after Cycle 12 we will have completed one Tyra year?)

Having seen half of it, the best things about The Makeover Episode are:

– Tyra hosts a princess pizza party for the hopefuls and tells everyone that she is awesome. Also, she is wearing a pantsuit.
– A pantsuit.
– Then, everyone on set drops big bowls of acid (wait for it to load, you will see what I mean) and Miss Tyra eats a poison apple and goes to sleep. Mr Jay kisses her and takes her away. She won’t be back till judging. Do we dare cheer?
– No, of course we do not. We are sad! No Tyra!
– Makeovers are interesting but I am mostly interested that they gave Elina MY HAIR and she is complaining about it.
– Although I am also fascinated that it took two fancy salon people to make hair that I did with a home bleaching kit and a bottle of red hair dye.
– I guess I will be applying for a job at Neil George salon post haste.

In other news, America’s First Next Top Model – no, not Miss Tyra, but Adrianne Curry – has a stalker who sent her expensive shoes. Pish! Stop it! Keep the shoes at your house!

That’s what I would say to my expensive-shoe-sending stalker. If I had one.

All right, y’all, farewell. I must go continue reading an excellent novel by Ivan E. Coyote called “Bow Grip.”

Posted in books, hair, television | 5 Comments

Foreshadowing: It’s Not Just for Literature!

Posted on 9/15/2008 by cheesefairy

On Friday I was reclining on my couch during a rare “Nap Overlap.” I had approximately 15 minutes to get some much needed shut-eye; much needed because of all the usual reasons plus we were expecting house guests for the weekend.

As I reclined, enjoying the fresh breeze wafting through the my newly clean window (I even took off the screen and washed it, holy cow) I became aware of another smell. A musty, musky, ugly smell. The smell of shit.

I got up and looked around. There was no cat shit. There was no baby shit. There was no dog shit. I had not shit myself. While each of these realizations was a relief, obviously I was still curious as to the source of the smell. The shit source, if you will. (We’re The Shit Source: playing all weekend at the Roxy!)

If you guessed that Friday afternoon on the brink of a very sunny and warm weekend was when our strata decided to hire a manure company to douse our townhouse complex in fertilizer, well, you win an all-expenses paid trip to my house which still, three days later, smells like shit.

Trombone woke up crying from his nap. He had just come down with a cold.

The house guests, my dear old American friend and her boyfriend, arrived intact and were delighted that we didn’t assume they were the source of the smell, because they are from Wisconsin, you see. How we did laugh.

The rest of the weekend featured:

– toddler cold
– infant sleep strike (partly our own fault for moving his crib up to our room so we could accommodate our guests)
– despite this, (and the resulting lack of sleep for the rest of us) staying up way too late talking about politics, elections, regional differences and dogs. Because you have to.
– where way too late in our world means 10 pm
– and getting up at the crack of ass with two squealing children to discover that our coffee pot had exactly one pot of coffee left in its life (a 7 year life!) and now, on Saturday morning, at 9 am, it was done.
– a flood in SA’s work’s server room, resulting in an emergency 5 hours at work for him on Saturday afternoon, leaving me with the runny nosed, whiny toddler, the underslept, whiny infant and, of course, our guests, who made us dinner and bought us beer despite us being smelly, noisy and completely unprepared for their visit (except for the clean window and the fresh manure – hey, what can I say, I roll out the red carpet for my American friends)
– despite all this, having a great time and seeing them off at 6 am Sunday
– and then noticing my own inevitable sore throat and that of SA
– and the equally inevitable congestion in the infant
– and then spending Sunday night, when I really could have used, say, 4 hours of sleep in a row, nursing every hour and putting Fresco to sleep in the car seat because he can’t breathe
– but I do still have my la-z-boy recliner and man am I glad
– and through it all, every time I open the window, shit.

On the plus side, Trombone is much improved and Fresco is battling on using his SuperImmunityPowers and SA and I are just fine, really. Nobody we know died. (Except David Foster Wallace. Dammit.) Some friends of ours had a new baby on the weekend. Some other friends have an OMG PUPPY!!!!! Shit makes the flowers grow, after all.

At least it had better.

Posted in everything, Fresco, trombone, whiny | 5 Comments

Time Life Presents: The Toddler Years

Posted on 9/9/2008 by cheesefairy

Pardon me. I am a little crankier than usual today. Trombone got up at 6 am and has been acting like a real twit ever since. Thankfully I was up before him, writing in my sanity journal. This might just be magical thinking but it’s day three of my sanity journal (writing first thing in the morning before I even get out of bed) and I have managed to maintain my temper and hold my fire, even in the face of such hits as:

“I want a cupcake! I WANT A CUPCAKE! I WANT A CUPCAKE! I DON’T WANT TO GO HOME!” (this at Safeway, nowhere near the cupcakes. Sadly the Safeway staff refused to babysit.)

“I DON’T WANT TO! I DON’T WANT TO!” (this after I offered to remove his wet shoes [because even though it’s raining we still play at the water park])

“I DON’T WANT TO GO TO SLEEP!” (this after I offered him some lunch)

and one of my personal, all-time favourites, after I made it clear we were leaving the park:

“I WANT TO GO ON THE SWING! AND FRESCO DOES TOO! AND WE DON’T WANT TO GO HOME!”

I waited a minute to formulate my reply.

“AND I WANNA GO TO THE STORE! AND I WANNA GO HOME!”

Yes, he is actually talking in all-caps, which is to say, hollering.

I think the key to the sanity journal is that even though I might not get a break for the whole rest of the day, at least I had that 20 – 30 minutes at the beginning. And even if it sometimes means getting up at 5 am to beat the infant (get there first, I mean, not assault) it is actually worth it. Physical exhaustion is easier to work around than mental / emotional exhaustion.

Otherwise how could I be strong enough to even be in the same room as a dvd called “Baby Animal Songs” by the good folks at Kidsongs. We watched their Old MacDonald dvd about 800 times a couple of months ago and it was pretty awful but I could at least find some humour in it. There was this kid, Sean, and he kept flubbing his lines and only after the 5th or 6th viewing did I notice and then I just kept watching him and it just got funnier…

(I guess you had to be there. And being 2 weeks post-partum wouldn’t hurt either.)

Anyway, Baby Animal Songs, no. No humour here. It stars obnoxiously cheery children with glossy lips and huge, white teeth, lip-syncing while they hold and dance with baby animals. Here is the description from the website:

In this charming music video starring dozens of baby animals, you’ll meet fuzzy little bear cubs, tiny foxes, busy monkeys and a long-legged giraffe. There are even white tiger cubs, a sweet baby girl elephant who dances to Oh, You Beautiful Doll and baby chimps create chaos in Yes, We Have No Bananas. Baby zebras, llamas, horses, puppies and kittens round out the cast of this fabulously fun sing-along you’ll want to watch over and over again!

I mean, you get an inkling of how horrible it is, (see: baby chimps) but you will never know. Never. Until you have seen it. I was sitting here this morning, while the children sang “Jeepers Creepers,” remembering how the boys used to sing that to the girls in grade 6, referring to our breasts, of course, and thinking: who the HELL thought this was a good idea.

It is just wrong to see 8 – 10 year old children mouthing the lyrics:

“Golly gee…when you turn them heaters on
Woe is me…got to put my cheaters on
Jeepers, creepers….where’d ya get them peepers
Oh, those weepers….how they hypnotize”

…while we watch footage of the eyes of owls, monkeys, lemurs, etc.

or a tune I had never heard before, (despite it having been penned, apparently, in 1924) called “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight.” Not so bad in itself but acted out by chimps? Kill me now, Kidsongs. Kill me now.

We have watched this dvd only twice so far (it goes back to the library on Friday) and today at lunch I overheard Trombone singing to himself, “Jeepers. Creepers. Jeepers. Creepers.”

Go ahead and recommend better dvds to me. Don’t matter. He loves this stuff, which makes me think I have given birth to the next Liberace or Ethel Merman. Longer term, I don’t think the journal is going to do it. I think I need a sanity island.

Posted in funny, movies, music, not funny, trombone, whiny | 8 Comments

Empty Notes

Posted on 9/8/2008 by cheesefairy

(this is meant to be further thoughts on the previous post. but then it got posted before an explanatory sentence and a couple of other bits were included)

Yesterday Saint Aardvark put on some Josh Rouse, to get the annoying children’s music out of his head. A lovely song called “Dressed up like Nebraska. (But I can’t touch you where you are / There you stood dressed up like Nebraska / Plain as day) Very soothing and melodic and Josh Rouse has a voice smoother than all the dairy products in the world put together in a blender. But Josh Rouse makes me nostalgic. He brings to mind our road trip in the old, carpeted van, the months after when I lived in a very green-walled apartment; alone except for the thousands of cockroaches. He makes my heart seize up in a goodbad way. He does not allow me to go about my business because I am mired in bittersweet reflection, remembering what year it is, marveling that I have known Saint Aardvark for 13 years.

(13 years ago we were dating, blushing, having hours-long telephone conversations. Can you believe that happy-crappy?)

I went through a brief catalogue in my head and realized: all the music I already own that is of a soothing nature has been used and abused many times over for Significant Life Events. No value can be accorded to the music, per se. Josh Rouse is not better or worse than Jack Johnson. Some music means more to me than other music, that’s all.

But Jack Johnson is just tunes. I never kissed a boy to his music. I never wrote my last exam, got a piercing, got stoned or consoled a sad friend while his music was playing. The only things I have done while his music was playing are: water aerobics and shop.

I am fully committed to my nostalgia but even I cannot make something tear-jerky out of water aerobics or shopping. Nosiree.

Posted in music | 4 Comments

Like Marijuana Leads to Heroin

Posted on 9/5/2008 by cheesefairy

Jack Johnson relaxes me.

Does this make me

a) on a downhill run to becoming someone who pays money to see Celine Dion in concert (incidentally, she has covered a Heart song, note for note, for why?)

b) overtaxed and not myself because of
b.1) hormones
b.2) exhaustion

c) an innocent victim of mind toxins?

When we went to water aerobics classes at the aquatic centre 3 years ago, one of the instructor people always put on Jack Johnson for the cool-down portion of the session. And I was all, what the hell is this beachy shit? And Saint Aardvark was all, hey, I am loving this groovy groove. So last year I bought him a Jack Johnson CD for Christmas and he was kind of lukewarm on it, I think, but it ended up in our computerstereo and one day a few weeks ago, a bad day, I went in and saw it there in our computerstereo and I played it and it was like taking valium. I instantly went to a good place where a breeze was blowing and my favourite drink was on tap. And because of that, the children in my care were also relaxed and so we had a much better afternoon than we might have had.

But Jack Johnson seems almost sly-ly inoffensive. He is inoffensive with an agenda. Is he a gateway drug of which I should be wary, lest what credibility I have left be mysteriously removed by the hipster police while I sleep? Or should I be more practical and say “whatever works” where “works” means keeping me and my spawn alive one more day.

I do not know.

In other music news, I, an avowed foe of the Barenaked Ladies (except for the song Brian Wilson, preferably live) am totally a fan of their album for children, Snacktime. I think all their lives they were working up to a CD for children.

Yeah, the hipsters are coming for my cred tonight, I think. Oh well. That’ll leave more room in the closest for plastic crap.

Posted in music, the parenthood | 4 Comments